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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25585126">Fire without Smoke</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felinis/pseuds/Felinis'>Felinis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SoulMate AU [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tales of Vesperia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:20:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25585126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felinis/pseuds/Felinis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The nature of Krytia soulmates and her own thoughts on Brave Vesperia leave Judith with heavy thoughts</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SoulMate AU [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1295180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fire without Smoke</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ah yes... me writing fic... doing things...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Judith was beginning to wonder if love truly was a cruel joke played on mortal men to make them suffer. A cursed blight created to drive them insane and force ties so they could never run away. Not from each other. Not from one another.</p><p>She wondered this because the more she stared at love and the people who experienced it the more it seemed design for pain.</p><p>Krytia do not have soulmates in the same way that humans do. Soulmates were meant for seeing who in the community would make your home happy and who would help best raise a child.  It was not framed around love like with humans but societal convenience you took to help family’s run smoothly.</p><p>Though, she did wonder and hope that her parents might have had love. That deep down they had cared for each other more than to just birth a child. Technically there was no way they could be anything but infatuated at the very least. The mark ensured fidelity but unlike human’s specific form of marking these kept a person from cheating and nothing more.</p><p>But then again… her birth only proved they laid together enough to make her and nothing else. Growing up in that carefree stagnant city there were plenty of Krytian couples and they all seemed decently happy. They never seemed to resent or bicker like the human hearts she would come to see.</p><p>No, they were content at the very least. Maybe resigned was a better word.</p><p>Judith’s turn would come soon and then she’d get her mark and see who fate said would be best for the good of the Krytia.</p><p>Not for her of course.</p><p>No, and that should be fine. It is fine.</p><p>Looking at love among humans, of the way it tears and shreds people, at how much loving another destroys them she can’t help thinking how much she loathes the idea of feeling it for herself. Because love is apparently wonderful and burning with passion and the fire of an inferno but it cloys and clings till it suffocates and destroys like smoke.</p><p>Love heals and hurts and she does not like the idea that one day that emotion could burn and reside in her. Or if it does already, when will it consume her?</p><p>Ba’ul will whisper to her that it is fine. That it is okay.</p><p>
  <em>But is it?</em>
</p><p>What if the longer she travels with these people and stays in Brave Vesperia the more she is tempted by it? What if she might already be? And what if that person already has a soulmate and they will never be able to love her without tragedy? What then?</p><p>Judith doesn’t want that! She doesn’t want pain and anxiety haunting in her thoughts about the impending day when she has to look at her wrist and see who it is. She doesn’t want the agony of having nothing at all and being left alone in a world full of matches.</p><p>What she wants… what she wants is for the flame to have no smoke. For love to come with no strings and agony. For caring and see hurt buried in their face to not dig in and make her think ‘I understand’.</p><p>She wants peace but she knows it would drown her to live like that. To live a content bond with a content Krytian in a content house that she would think every day of destroying.</p><p>What she wants- what Judith craves is the feeling of love that does not destroy the life she knew and had so much that she can’t go back. That loneliness would crush her and that not waking up to the messy hair of Karol as he groans for more sleep like a little kid with drool on the pillow; of Rita’s furrowed brow not in a book as she leafs through the pages; that laughter like a tinkling bell of Estelle as Yuri jests with her; Raven playing games with her in jest; Yuri sharpening his sword and begging her for a spar.</p><p>These people- their emotions hurt her. Their pain and joy- fears and sorrows; all the anxiety and jubilation they share is a blessing and a burden that Judith knows will destroy who she is now. The fire and smoke will kill and change who she is.</p><p>That they will be a part of her. Those soulmarks mocking her from a distance.</p><p>The fire and smoke will consume her but that’s not so bad.</p>
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